"several Things Don't Make Sense About What I saw" - UFO Perplexes Plano Star Gazer

• When: September 29th, 2013
• Where: Plano
• What: Fiery orange light, moving slowly through sky and changing brightness
  

Over in Plano, an experienced star gazer saw something quite peculiar: a bright orange light with rough edges, very large or very close to the ground or both. It moved slowly through the sky and the witness, who kindly submitted a full account to TUS (read below), suspects it might be space junk, but is for the most part bewildered.

The night before, a similar sighting occurred in nearby Dallas. The same night, meteor activity was quite active.

Check out the full testimony:

Saw something very strange last night (9/29/13) at approximately 11:50pm CST in the sky over our house in Plano, TX. I'm an avid "naked eye" meteor shower and sky watcher, and took two Astronomy courses in college in 2005, and while I'm certainly no expert; what I saw Sunday night has me totally baffled.
I was sitting on our patio working on my laptop when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bright orange light through the leaves of our large pecan tree. At first I thought "here come the nightly planes" which are two commercial flights that fly over us about that time en route to DFW each night between 11:30pm-12:30am, but immediately knew that was not the case, as those planes never have "orange" lights. So I got out of my chair and walked onto the deck to wait to see the object come out from behind our pecan tree. I probably waited about 5 seconds before it cleared the tree, (planes would have been visible much faster from behind the tree), and when the unknown object was visible, I saw a bright orange "roundish" glowing object that looked like could have been on fire. It was moving VERY slowly from Northwest to Southeast (the planes all fly Northeast to Southwest over us) It was not completely "smooth" around the edges, but I guess you could say it was a little rough around the edges? And as far as size; if I had stuck my finger into the air to point at it, it would have been about the size of a pencil eraser (so about what a low flying plane would appear), and being so bright, the object was either really big, really low, or both. There was no sound at all (also no planes in the sky at the time) The object continued along (away from me) at the same slow speed for another 5 seconds, then the "lights" dimmed, came back to bright, then blinked out completely, and for about 3 more seconds, I could still see the now unlit round object (which appeared to be light gray), as it moved further away...which is very strange to have been able to see it after the lights/fire went out; considering the moon was not out, and the sky was pretty dark last night.
Several things don't make sense about what I saw, so I ran inside to tell my husband who was reading in bed; and he and I both began searching online for any explanation of what I saw.....
1) I'm familiar with meteors and this was moving WAY too slow to be any meteor I have ever witnessed, and I've never seen a meteor get dim, then bright again, "blink out" and still see something moving in the sky. With all the stories of the recent "fireball" meteors and some being orange, I looked online and found several videos of those to compare; and indeed, those meteors were moving much faster across the sky than what I saw. Also meteors tend to travel down towards the horizon, yet this appeared to maintain altitude and certainly didn't look to be "falling". It did appear to get somewhat lower, but that could easily have been because it was moving away from me.
2) It moved in a straight line, and the speed was somewhat similar to if you watch a satellite or the space station high up in the sky above earth; and this looked almost to have an "orbit path" so I thought perhaps it was some space "junk" falling to earth and burning up. However, after researching this theory, there is nothing reported to have fallen to earth at the time of what I saw, or any space junk falling to earth last night at all for that matter. Also, from what I've read, falling space debris would have moved faster across the sky than the object I witnessed.
UFO, secret government craft, super slow meteor, space junk? Honestly it could be any of these, but all I know is it was unlike anything I've ever seen in the sky.

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